


Do Not Mess With These People

by TwoCatsTailoring



Series: Meta Collection [3]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Meta Analysis, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Shinra, archived from twocatstailoring blog, the Turks - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 18:45:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16792618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoCatsTailoring/pseuds/TwoCatsTailoring
Summary: An assessment of the Turks, how they operate, what their duties are, and how their minds work in relationship to the frequently unsavory jobs that they do for ShinRa.





	Do Not Mess With These People

**Author's Note:**

> Archived from twocatstailoring tumblr.

> **Reno** : All right, Corneo. This’ll be over quick, so listen up. Why do you think we went to all the trouble of teaming up with those guys to get you…? 1. Because we were ready to die   
>  2\. Because we were sure of victory   
>  3\. Because we were clueless
> 
> **Corneo** : Two…Number two?
> 
> **Reno** : All wrong.
> 
> **Corneo** : No…! Wait, sto……! Aaaaaaaaaa……p
> 
> **Reno** : The correct answer was…
> 
> **Rude** : …because it’s our job.

Okay, so let me talk about this for a minute. For those who haven’t seen this scene before, it can be a bit disturbing on a lot of levels. This is, I think, the first time that the player really gets to see what the Turks are truly capable of if the Turks elect to act. 

Because scumbag or not, they just let a guy fall to a grisly, painful death from the edge of a statue carved from a mountain. It’s not like he fell a few feet and broke a leg or two. No, Corneo himself says that if he lets the girls fall that they’ll be ‘squished tomatoes’ so pretty much all that is left of the Don? Is a reeking smear. And the Turks made this happen with no second guessing and no remorse at all.

Now there’s a lot of ways that you can read this scene - it’s their job to protect their own, it was their job to go after the Don, or they are just that badass. I think it is all three plus a fourth. They are still driving Cloud and Co. forward.

First of all, there is no reason whatsoever for the Turks to have any interest in saving Yuffie Kisaragi. She is displaced Wutai royalty and Wutai lost a war to ShinRa not many years before, reducing Wutai to a tourist trap and no real threat at all. What feelings would the ShinRa Watchdogs have about her? Either none or that having her dead would seal off that royal inheritance once and for all, ending any hope of Wutai rising again.

Then there is Elena. We know now that the relationship with Elena is a long one, the Turks knowing her and caring about her well-being first through Gun and then, not long before in OG (I buy the 2-3 month timeline for OG’s events because it makes the crush of time and the intensity ratchet up several notches.) when she became a Turk. 

Now let’s sidetrack for a moment and talk about Elena. She swore she would never become a Turk so long as Gun was involved because of some deep-seeded and completely legitimate sibling rivalry. Gun was chosen over her because she was the better, more logical choice. Elena was still hurt by this and did her best to prove her worth to the Turks while at the same time resenting both sister and organization she worked for.

Elena, from the beginning, was a stellar Turk. It probably took a great deal of convincing to get her to step in when they were a man down, in the middle of a worldwide crisis and the company itself was about to implode, but she did and no one regretted it. Even by Vincent’s allusions to her strength and resilience in On The Way To A Smile, she is an indispensable part of the team. 

Here’s where things get difficult in the situation with the Don in Wutai. I don’t think the Turks knew it was coming.

The Turks know who the Don is. They know what he does. ShinRa allows the Don to continue his business in the slums because is a valuable informant. The Don is, after all, the one who blew the whistle on AVALANCHE 2.0, providing the information needed to drop the plate and pin it on them and capture Aerith. Knowing who he is and what he does, I can’t imagine that Elena or Reno and Rude would have let her go anywhere alone if they had known he was lurking around.

The Turks are violent, morally gray people with a taste for destruction and a gift for force but they are not, generally speaking, lecherous scumbags themselves. The Don was useful, therefore he was allowed to walk around.

So the Don turns up, determined to obey his own set of rules. After all, he gets to do just as he pleases back in Midgar and the Turks partake in his wares and he’s still in business, right? He is a valuable asset to ShinRa and they would never question anything he did right?

Only he screwed up. Bad. Because he decided to make one of their own a target. Now, whether he knew Elena was a Turk or not, who can say? The man’s ego was huge, so who knows what he really thought about anything. But it is safe to say that just because a rat is useful in a certain setting, it does not compute that he would also be well-informed about what the cat is up to.

So the Don, with his inflated sense of his own value, hauls off and takes both the Wutaiian princess and the newest Turk. But the Turks have a mission. They are in Wutai, not for time off, but to continue their mission: get Cloud Strife and his merry band of misfits ready to face Sephiroth. Yuffie is nothing to them, but to the Strife party, even after she’s stolen all their materia and run off, she matters. 

Because the Turks know. They know who Cloud is even when Cloud doesn’t have a clue. They were there, they know that what he’s apinting himself as is not the truth. They probably can put two and two together and realize that there is a lot of psychological displacement going on there but they can’t breathe a word of it.

Because it will compromise the mission. 

Just like letting the little Wutaiian princess die will be a severe emotional blow to Aerith (who Cloud is making googly eyes at) and to Tifa (who can drop one word and have Cloud heading back to Midgar.) No, Princess has to live because the risk of failure is too great. And they can’t fail this.

They also have to get Elena back, and that is where this whole thing takes a nasty, personal turn. Why push him off a cliff to smear on the rocks? Why not a nice gunshot? Zap him one? Break his neck? Oh, no no my sweet friends. Nothing so tidy and kind for the idiot who didn’t know his place, took a Turk (even if he didn’t know she was one, she told him and he still kept her prisoner,) and threatened her well-being.

Reno and Rude do not go after Elena because she is a woman, either. They go after her because she is a Turk. And, as the scattered and smeared remains of the Don are a testement to, you do not fuck with a Turk.

Period.


End file.
